


Mama Foxter's Abysmal Rescue

by Doceo_Percepto



Series: Bendy's Murderous Adventure Across Moominvalley [24]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine, Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Incest, Object Insertion, Other, Psychological Trauma, Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-07-08 09:35:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15927728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doceo_Percepto/pseuds/Doceo_Percepto
Summary: You rescue your son from his abusers. Or at least you try to.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sp00py](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Mama Foxter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14950622) by [Sp00py](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/pseuds/Sp00py). 
  * Inspired by [Mama Foxter’s Week of Wonders](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16066856) by [Sp00py](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/pseuds/Sp00py). 



> I think Spoopy has the right idea that, because these stories have so many different Snufkins and Joxters running around, it’s useful to outline the characters beforehand. Apart from Happy, all Snufkins and Joxters tend to be referred to only by their species name, but here’s the Main Three identified by their colloquial names:
> 
> Mama Foxter - Happy’s father; a good person, so far as Joxters go  
> Lazy Joxter - the worst Joxter; if there’s something horrible that can be done, he’s done it to a Snufkin  
> Happy - Mama’s son, a good boy, Bendy’s plaything, and very very broken
> 
> Also, I have heavily drawn from the two fics that inspired this one.

There are some things in this world you do not understand. Some things you encounter in your life, and cannot comprehend.

 

The first of these things is the cruelty of other Joxters.

You yourself are a Joxter, and like any Joxter, you’re inclined towards company. Preferably company soft and quiet and as amorously devoted to nature as you are. When you were not a youth, but still quite young, you had stumbled upon a Joxter nest in the wilderness. One beautifully woven with branches, rope, and lengths of fabric, all of it neatly draped between trees and elevated from the forest floor below.

For a time, you are very happy here. The other Joxters are gentle, and sleepy, and like you are content to enjoy the simple things in life, with no hurry whatsoever. You sleep curled up with them, and share meals, and share space.

Then one day the nest rouses with a low chittering that builds and builds. Energy lifts one head after another, where once they’d be happy to nap. There’s a tension abuzz in the air, an excitement. A Snufkin is nearby, you can tell by scent.

That is when you learn that you are not like other Joxters. You’re not like them at all.

They capture the Snufkin. They smile and croon and lull to him, while he is held firmly still. Their paws grope all over his body – and you understand, on some level, because Snufkins are sweet-smelling and pretty. But this one does not want what they are doing, and they do not care. Groping turns to licking and kissing, and then they’re tearing his clothing.

“What’s wrong?” a very young Joxter with deep reddish mahogany hair asks you. “Don’t you want a taste?”

The Snufkin has begun screaming. It is with a horribly civilized sort of politeness that they take turns, each quite patient to wait, and each quite content to watch another enjoy the Snufkin.

The mahogany haired Joxter strokes your whiskers and smiles. You’ve never been so frightened of your own kind.

Then there is no one else between the Snufkin’s legs. Several Joxters hold him down, while dozens of cat-like eyes blink expectantly at you.

“Go on,” the young Joxter purrs to you, and soft hands press to your back.

You do not sleep that night. After leaving the nest in the morning, you do not sleep for another week. In time, you come across other Joxters, and you again seek companionship only to find that their stories are all the same, only varying in the degree of reprehensibility. You think, for a time, that you have heard the worst of Joxters, only to meet more with stories and actions that further nauseate and revolt you. You cannot be with other Joxters, and eventually, you give up trying.

 

In time, you have a son. You don’t plan on having one, but you meet a lovely, exuberant Mymble, and things happen that way. You care for him like you have never cared for anything before, not even yourself, and your greatest fear is that one day he will come across Joxters, and they will hurt him as Joxters do. With this in mind, you teach him everything he needs to know to survive in the wild, and you teach him, most of all, to never, _never_ associate with Joxters.

He learns it well, and becomes clever and solitary. When he is all grown, you leave him to allow him to roam as Snufkins are meant to do.

For many years, you hear nothing from him, and this is generally the best news. While curled in flowerbeds, or draped over tree branches, or plucking ripe fruit, you imagine the sort of adventures he must be having. You recollect the smile he had always been so quick to, and a delightful pride blooms warmly in your chest.

There is nothing so contenting as knowing you have a raised a strong, free Snufkin, and that he has grown past needing your help.

But you are wrong, it turns out, about your son’s fate.

 

It’s purely by chance that you catch his scent again. You wake one chilly spring morning, to find the lovely Snufkin you had been bedding is gone, and it leaves a hollow in your chest. That is the way of Snufkins, though. They have boundless energy and wanderlust, of a variety that you simply cannot match. Snufkins do not stay in one place for long, and you consider yourself lucky this one had remained for the handful of weeks he had (that was longer than most).

It’s as you gather a wool blanket around yourself, and close your eyes to drift back to sleep, that the scent comes to you.

It’s faint but unmistakable, ushered in with a biting breeze. Immediately your head pops up, and you look about as if you'd possibly find your son right there beside you. That’s a silly thought, of course, with the scent so distant and ephemeral. But you are galvanized into motion.

You want to listen at length to his tales of the fantastical places he must have visited; you want to sit and listen for hours, if he’ll be willing to talk, about any sort of creatures he’s met, and if perhaps he’d found any queer plants, or new fruits that you’d like to try. You have always been poor at marking the passage of time, but you are quite sure many summers have passed since you last saw your Snufkin – perhaps three?

So you wrap the wool blanket about your shoulders, scent the wind, and follow it.

 

You are not long in your journey before hope is strangled by fear: a deep, deep fear that only parents can know. Your son’s scent is twined with that of two others – one, a Joxter, and the other caustic and unrecognizable. Both fill you with dread. Your pace quickens, and your heart races.

When you finally stumble across your son, you find him in a Joxter nest – the worst sort of place to be. The trees are heavily decorated with bright green bulbs of flowers mere days away from blooming, some with white petals already peeking through, and these hang over a strange scene.

Your Snufkin is there across the clearing, reclining against a grounded canoe. His legs are spread, and there’s something small and black laying down between his bare thighs.

You are not so naïve as to not immediately realize what exactly that small creature is doing to him, especially given the expression painted across Snufkin’s face, but the shock of it arrests you in place. Of course it makes sense that Snufkin, upon growing up, would explore those sorts of things, but – well, you had simply never thought - he never showed any interest before –

Snufkin lets out a soft moan, and tangled in it is what you suppose is that creature’s name. You avert your eyes, fiddle with your scarf, take a step back. You should go. Return later. You’re so muddled that you don’t think about the Joxter scent, not at first – but when you turn, you nearly collide with him.

“Hullo,” he says. His eyes are pale and half lidded. He’s smiling, and you know in your bones that this Joxter is wicked, crueler perhaps than other Joxters. But it’s his scent that pervades this entire nest, and you don’t understand.

“They are so…” the Joxter’s eyes drift past you, and his words are a sigh, “ _delectable_ to watch, aren’t they?”

You don’t understand at all. Your son looks relaxed, happy, like any Snufkin who had found someone pleasant to romp with. But how can he look that way, with a Joxter around?

“You must want a sampling of Happy yourself,” the Joxter sounds wistful. “But I’m afraid Bendy won’t let you. He doesn’t let anyone, nowadays. It’s best not to try, dear.”

You stare at the Joxter, failing to comprehend what he’s attempting to say. All you know is that you don’t like it.

The Joxter’s eyes suddenly widen with dawning realization. “Now, isn’t that a pity! You’re his father, aren’t you? The resemblance is striking; I’m surprised I didn’t notice sooner. If only you had come a few weeks earlier, you may have gotten a chance. I’m dreadfully sorry. It must be positively awful to have spent all those years building his trust, and then I went and stole him from under you." The Joxter huffed. "And now Bendy won't let you enjoy him. I feel like a real crook.”

“You’re keeping my son captive,” you say slowly.

“Oh, once, perhaps, but now he stays voluntarily.”

Your blood burns. This man is a maniac. You don’t begin to grasp what may have happened to Snufkin, or why he is so compliant (perhaps a farce, to better preserve his life – the thought makes you shake), but you do know that it’s time to go, now. And you're going to bring your son with you. Whatever has happened to him, you will fix it. You turn around, say sharply, “Snufkin!” He's still busy with that tiny creature. He doesn't respond.

You try not to look at what’s going on, and call again, sharper, “Snufkin!”

“Oh, we’re on his bad side,” the Joxter remarks.

“What?”

The Joxter taps his ear. “Deaf in one ear, love. It’s the one facing us. Also, you ought to know he only responds to the name Happy. Do you like it? I came up with it myself.”

Happy – that is what they’re calling your son. It’s derisive and cruel: a perverse joke undoubtedly made over the fact your son smiles so readily, in happiness or fear or nervousness. They have taken such a sweet trait and corrupted it into a joke. The thought sickens you, as does the shock of what the Joxter had said: deaf in one ear.  _Deaf in one ear_. Your son had not been deaf when you saw him last.  

You don’t intend to, but suddenly your knuckles thud against the Joxter’s face. He staggers, groans. Suddenly you’re hitting him again, and again, and – your arm rears back for another strike when something strong and wet wraps around it. You’re thrown backward hard enough to wrench your shoulder, and you hit the dirt.

When you dizzily gaze up, that small creature that was with Snufkin is now standing over you, its expression wrongly flat and static, like nothing you've ever seen.

“What’s the big idea?” it asks you.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” the Joxter mumbles, touching his bloody lip tenderly. “I do deserve that, Bendy. You can’t blame him – he’s Happy’s father, you know, and he dedicated his life to raising Happy. It’s understandable for him to be upset, the poor dear.”

Growling, you get back up and push past the small creature, determined to flay this Joxter within an inch of his life.

You don’t get the chance to even touch him.

You take one step forward, and then you’re yanked down again. Your skull thuds on dirt, and this time a huge black paw slams your chest to the ground. It clenches and you feel sharp claw tips bite through your shirt. Suddenly it’s difficult to breathe, either from the weight of it on your chest, or the fear that has suddenly turned your blood to ice.

The lampblack creature on top of you grins down; the realization properly sinks in. It’s a shapeshifter. And this nest is much better guarded than you had imagined.

“Don’t eat him,” the Joxter chastises lightly. “He is a Joxter, darling, we owe him some respect.” Eat.  _Eat?_ Gazing up at its Cheshire grin, you can imagine it  _eating_ far too well.

Then the Joxter is kneeling by your head, and his gloved fingers twirl through your whiskers.

“You do look so much like your son,” the Joxter murmurs. His fingers stroke down your neck. You snarl and jerk your arm up to push him off, but immediately it’s grabbed by another black paw. Your breath comes fast and shakily. You're pinned, like a rabbit beneath a wolf. 

The Joxter has the nerve to look remorseful. “I’m sorry, my friend. I do sympathize with your feelings – you must have worked so hard to cultivate Happy’s trust. But I’m also afraid I can’t simply let you attack me. Please, is there anything I can do to make up for my crime?”

“Give me my son back,” you growl, scrambling for a shred of ferocity while you're held helplessly prone. 

“Ah.” The Joxter gives a small, knowing smile. “I’m afraid _that_ is not up to me. You see, _I’m_ not in charge of Happy.”

At first, you don’t understand. Then the Joxter slowly raises one finger and directs it above you. Your eyes follow to the disk-like head of the monster, and its huge serrated teeth like a mouth full of broken glass.

Oh.

“Ask him,” the Joxter says.

There’s no eyes to meet in this thing’s skull, but you have no doubt it’s looking at you expectantly.

“Um-“ you start.

A harsh snarl tears from its throat, deep enough to rattle in your bones. Its paw incrementally increases the pressure on your chest, until your lungs are crushed under the weight.

“Hrng-“ you twitch and jolt.

“Okay, now, that’s enough,” the Joxter flaps his hands and tuts. “A simple head shake would have sufficed-“

You gasp in relief when the pressure is lifted.

“Is there anything else, then?” the Joxter asks.

“Let me go!”

“Ah, now that’s easy. I was going to let you go regardless, dear, s’long as you won’t go attacking me again. Bendy?”

The monster lifts his paw. Gasping, you scramble to your feet.

You want to beat this Joxter’s face into a bloody pulp, and you don’t care if this monster rips you into pieces for doing it. If it weren’t for your son nearby, you would have happily died for the chance. But that’s the thing. Your son is nearby. This isn’t about you. This isn’t about your feelings, and your hatred, and rage, and injustice. This is about the welfare of your son.

If you get killed, there will be nobody to save him from this nightmare.

So you take a step back. You glance at your Snufkin, who is still sitting by the canoe and gazing at the scene with mild curiosity. Then your gaze shifts to the monster and the Joxter still watching you.

Okay, you can’t just grab Snufkin and run.

You need to approach this with a better strategy. It will take time to plan. So, you lick your lips, turn, and flee into the forest, ignoring the Joxter calling after you.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to low-key plagiarize Sp00py.

For hours after your flight from the nest, your mind is reeling.

You don’t know what to think, or how to begin to process what you’ve seen and experienced. All you know is a tight, primal fear that’s clenched up in your chest, and the voice playing ceaselessly in your head, telling you that you need to get your son free. You need to get him far, far away. _Now_ , it tells you. Now, or yesterday, or before all this happened. But at least now.

Only you can’t. Not immediately. Even the thought of coming face to face with that monster again makes your knees weak. You will die if you cross it again. Then Snufkin would be left to their attention, with nobody to save him. And their attention… you shudder. What he must have endured. 

You can’t linger on it. Those thoughts do not help you. Escape and recovery. That is what matters. Joxters do what Joxters do, and this one is particularly awful, particularly cruel, with a demon hovering behind him, but Snufkins recover. They are resilient. Your son can recover, too.

If you can only get him out.

Shaking, you crawl up into a tree branch, close enough that you can still smell the nest. This way, you will be able to tell if your Snufkin’s life is in immediate danger, if you need to bolt to save him. And this way, you can smell the Joxter and his monster. You wonder if it’s not too much to hope for, that one day they simply leave your son alone in the nest, so you can swoop in and take him.

Soon the Joxter saunters up to your tree and blinks up at you. “You ran off so fast,” he says, “but then you go and settle here. Bendy doesn’t know you're here, love, but surely you knew I’d be able to smell you?”

Yes, you had assumed he’d be able to smell you whether you were a mile away or not. There was no helping that.

The Joxter sighs. “Here, have some berries, why don’t you?” He holds up a bunch of black berries.

“No.”

“You don’t need to wait around. Come, why don’t you return to the nest with me? We’ll get a lovely Snufkin together, wouldn't that be nice?”

You hop down from the branch and walk away. You're immensely relieved he does not follow.

 

Over the following week, you sometimes hear crying, sometimes moaning or singing or low talking. But always Snufkin’s scent is mixed with the chemical one, and you are too afraid to approach, even when your heart clenches. Twice more the Joxter visits you, each time bearing food and a hopeful look in his eyes.

“Are you quite certain you don’t want any?” he beckons a fluffy golden roll at you. “I went and got them myself. It’s quite a walk, you know, to the Moomin house, and all that effort to sneak around.”

Your stomach growls as you say, “No.” You haven’t been eating exceptionally well in this past week. You haven’t been doing much at all except waiting, tense as an instrument string poised to snap.

His expression is surly. “You aren’t still upset about your son? We can put that behind us, dear. If there’s anything I can do, anything at all-”

“There is nothing except to give him back.”

The Joxter’s face falls, and he brings the roll back to his chest, looking wounded. “As I said, if only it were up to me-“

“Then go away.”

His pale eyes gleam. “I know I did a wrong thing,” he says stiffly, “stealing your own prize out from under you, but I’ve gone and apologized and offered you food and a nest and anything you could want – except Happy, of course.”

He disgusts you. So deeply that you feel nauseous in his presence. You contemplate, briefly, the merits of trying to kill him now.

“I allow you stay here, because you are a Joxter,” he continues when you fail to reply, “But do consider your choices carefully, or I may let slip to Bendy that you’re lurking about.”

With that, he’s gone, and you’re relieved. But also worried. How long until the Joxter grows tired of your presence here? How long until you’re forced out or killed?

That evening, you spend hours pondering over how you might lure the monster and the Joxter from their nest. In that time, you’re frightened at the vile options you consider. A Snufkin, you think. A Snufkin might lure them out, if you could acquire one yourself, and perhaps leave it tied or bleeding just close enough for the Joxter to smell. Later, it frightens you how readily you consider the possibility.

For your conscience and for an innocent Snufkin’s life, you thankfully never have to, because when you wake the next morning with every intention of seeking a new Snufkin as bait, the nest is empty of all residents apart from your son.

At first, you don’t believe your luck. You sniff the air again, but you're quite sure. Even still, you hesitate. How can this not be a trick? The Joxter knows you’re here, and surely knows your intentions?

But despite your doubts, there is no way at all you wouldn't take the chance. So you drop from your tree, and hurry into the nest.

Sure enough, Snufkin is there, sitting cross-legged by the canoe and arranging the numerous packs.

You dart forward, heart surging. “Snufkin, my son-“ You dive to his side, touch his cheek. Up close, you can see now some of the harm that has come to your Snufkin, injuries that you were unable to properly glimpse across the nest when you first encountered him. Pale pink scars raked down his shin, bruises all over his face, a purplish bite on his neck. Your heart shudders, and you cling to him as if he’d float away the moment your grip weakens. 

“My name is Happy,” he tells you matter-of-factly, as if speaking to a stranger.

Slowly you withdraw from the hug. Your paws cradle his cheeks. “No, no, love… Don’t you recognize me?”

He squints. For one awful moment, your heart drops through your stomach and you think, _he’s not going to know me_. The son you raised and gave all your love to. Then it dawns. “You’re my father.” He says it funny, like he hasn’t said that word in a long, long time, and like his lips and tongue are just remembering how to form it.

“Yes, yes Snufkin,” you nearly cry in relief.

“Happy,” he corrects. “You keep getting that wrong. Just like you raised me wrong.”

That freezes you. “What do you mean?”

“You never used me. This went to waste for so long.” Then, to your horror, he lifts his shirt and he’s wearing nothing underneath.

You choke. In the brief glimpse you get, you see a network of scars littering his stomach, vicious dark bruising on his thighs, and new, fresh red and purple bites. “Snufkin!” You hurriedly yank his shirt down, but you feel nauseated.

“Don’t worry,” he says, smiling. “Papa got me started right a bunch of summers ago, and now Bendy makes sure I get used all the time. They’ve both been so good to me, like you never were.”

No.

No no no.

This wasn’t right. You want to find words that will show him how wrong it is; you want to shake him, even, until he thinks straight, but instead of doing either of those things you stare blankly. A bunch of summers, he'd said. How long. 

“Snufkin-“ you begin helplessly, as if you know what to say.

“Happy."

You feel like your mind is breaking. You have a horrible fear that Snufkin’s already has. “We need to go,” you say numbly. At any moment the Joxter and that monster might return. Healing can come later. First, escape.

But he looks at you with only confusion. “Go where?”

“Away.”

A small, puzzled smile appears at his lips. “No. Bendy and the Joxter are hunting. My job is to stay here. I ought to have some food ready for my papa. And Bendy will be all excited after killing. He’ll want to fuck me, I’m sure.”

You can’t believe what you’re hearing. The words send shocks through you like a physical force. Fuzzily distant from your own body, you utter, “Let’s go now.” And you grasp his arm.

“No.” He twists out of your grip. “I have to stay here and look pretty.”

“We’re leaving.”

Again, he writhes and pushes off your paws, this time with a snarled, “get off me!”

You've never heard your son sound so hateful before, not since he was a little boy prone to tantrums. Now, like then, it sears in your heart. Now, unlike then, it’s much harder to convince yourself this is temporary.

“I’m not going with you, and I’m not going to let you use me,” he says angrily. “Bendy does that now, and nobody else is allowed to. If you wanted me, you should have taken and used me when I was younger. But you didn’t. Don’t pretend now like you love me.”

“I do love you,” you say weakly. “I want you healthy, and free, and-“

“Don’t be cruel,” Snufkin mutters, wrapping his arms around himself and looking away.

You bite down your protest. This is not your son speaking, but the abuse that he has endured. You need to be strong for his sake, no matter how much it hurts to hear this. “Please, Snufkin, you must leave with me-“

“Happy.”

You close your eyes, and take a deep breath. “Happy… They – they want you to leave with me.” You feel sick and sour inside, lying to him as a Joxter would lie to manipulate a Snufkin. But how else are you supposed to get him away?

You hate how quickly his expression turns to hope. “You talked to them? Do you know when they’ll be back? Sometimes it takes them hours, but sometimes it’s days, and – and then things get really scary.”

“I – no. No. They want to meet you. Outside the nest.”

“They do?”

“Yes,” you confirm. “They want it very much.”

“But…” His head swerves left to right. “They trust me to stay here. So when they come back, I’ll be available-“

“That was the plan,” you allow, hating yourself, “but they changed it. They wanted me to guide you somewhere new. Where you can meet them.”

“Oh. It’s not to meet another Snufkin, is it?”

“What?”

“I don’t want them to keep another Snufkin. The last one - _Knifey_ \- tried to get Bendy to like him more than me. I had to kill him.” Then, hurriedly, “but it was self-defense. He attacked me first.” Snufkin’s gazing at you like he’s concerned you don’t believe him.

Your answer is slow and faltering to come, “no, it’s… it’s not another Snufkin. Just come with me, erm, Happy.”

“Yes, papa.”

That finally gets him moving, but your heart is thudding fast under your ribs. _I had to kill him._ You yourself have never killed anything more than rabbits and fish, even as much as you'd like to kill the Joxter that has done this to your son. But to think of Snufkin…

Abuse, you tell yourself. He isn’t himself. That's not him. He isn't... Your justifications and arguments fall apart and you're left feeling like you're in pieces.

“Come along,” you say stiffly. Taking his wrist, you lead him from the nest. Your skin prickles with fear of ambush, with the certainty you will not be able to guide him free. But nothing happens. The two of you slip into the woods, and nothing follows, nothing pursues.

“How far away are they?” Snufkin asks, cheerful as can be.

“Quite far,” you answer.

“I can’t wait to see them again. It’s always so hard waiting for them, papa. Luckily, they bring me hunting a whole lot, so I get to watch and play with the Snufkins, too. But sometimes they hunt on their own, and I get so lonely.”

You pause, sniff the wind. Anywhere they are not is where you want to be. You turn westward, and hurry faster. You must get very very far away, to get out of range of the Joxter’s sense of smell. You must hurry.

“Do you think Bendy will be happy to see me?” Snufkin asks you.

You don’t have a response. You don’t have a response to anything he’s saying.

“You know, the ink demon. His name is Bendy.” Snufkin says it like he’s introducing an admired lover. In the very same tone, he continues, “isn’t he amazing? He takes care of me, papa, he looks after me and feeds me and gives me water.”

You don’t understand. You’ve seen Snufkins raped, and you’ve seen them psychologically broken, but you have never ever encountered one that… that speaks of his abusers like this. You don’t know what to say, but disgust rises to the surface and before you can stop it, you spit out, “he’s evil.” They're both evil. They shouldn't exist.

Snufkin looks affronted. “He’s not evil. He treats Snufkins right, papa. And he’s really actually very sweet and affectionate. Look, he gave me this as a gift-”

With his free paw, Snufkin tugs on something silver winking underneath his scarf. He pulls free a wire, upon which hangs many harmonicas. “They’re Snufkin’s harmonicas,” Snufkin says, like it was the most marvelous thing.

“Please move faster,” you urge.

Snufkin elaborates, “Aren’t they lovely? Every one is from a different Snufkin that they murdered. We have a whole new fishing line set up in the nest, since we go through a lot of Snufkins, but these ones I'm allowed to keep.”

“Faster.” You’re dragging him along at this point, squeezing his wrist much harder than you intend to.

“I love these harmonicas so much. I feel so close to those other Snufkins this way. They’re always right there over my heart. I wish I could be them, every one of them. Wish I could have felt what it’s like. I want Bendy to kill me, just like them. It’s what I-“

“Shut up.” It spits from your mouth before you can stop it, and you whirl on Snufkin with your eyes blazing.

Both of you stop short. You look down and realize your nails have bitten into his wrist. Immediately, you let go in horror. You don’t want to hurt him. You didn’t mean to.

“I’m sorry,” you say numbly, shocked. “I’m so sorry. I…”

“It’s okay.” He smiles faintly at you. “Don’t feel sad, papa. I’m meant to be hurt. I deserve it for upsetting you.”

“You aren’t-“ you start, tiredly. The serenity of his expression haunts you. Feeling older than your age, you take his paw and continue on. You need to escape this entire valley. You need to disappear with him. Some place they will never find him.

Spring rains have made the ground soft and muddy, with bright green shoots just emerging. You navigate carefully, already thinking ahead to the slope up the mountain. It was slippery on the way down, but thankfully the trees and their roots kept it from being too challenging. You’re sure it will be a quick enough trip over, and then the two of you will be out of the valley. It’s a half day’s journey away, so if you’re swift, you will be able to camp out of the valley.

“I should make a new flower crown,” Snufkin remarks. “The Joxter loves flowers. I think that’s why he picked the nest he did. You saw the flowers, didn’t you papa? They’re just about to bloom. They look wonderful once they do. Like a blanket of fluffy white cotton.”

“I saw,” you reply shortly.

Snufkins are generally quiet creatures. Your son was once quiet, too. He preferred listening to the sounds of the forest, and the songs of nature, to mindless chatter. That, clearly, is one of many things that has changed. Dread nestles only deeper in your heart. So little of the son you know is left. So little that you barely recognize him.

“Please hurry,” you urge him again, as he’s going on about flowers, and not at all focused on moving forward.

“Is there a rush?” he asks. “Are they impatient to see me?” the end of his words lilt up in disbelief and excitement.

“Yes,” you grind out angrily, because you don’t know what else to say, but he needs to move. Although the wind is favorable, and you can’t smell the Joxter or his pet monster, you feel a constant cold weight, like eyes watching your back. You are far, far too aware that if you do not get out of the Joxter’s range in time, you will undoubtedly die, and your son will be dragged back into their clutches.

It’s a long trip ahead of you, but you suddenly can no longer restrain that terror. You yank Snufkin into a run, and the two of you go flying through the trees, feet slipping in the mud and crushing flowers underfoot.

Snufkin starts giggling maniacally. You run as long as you can, and then eventually hunch over, winded, while Snufkin laughs beside you.

“That was fun. Like playing tag with Bendy, except instead of running away from him, I’m running _toward_ him. I like it.”

“We need to keep moving.” You force your feet forward, though your legs ache from the run.

“Are we close?” Snufkin asks.

“Not yet.” Hunger and thirst gnaw deep in your belly as the afternoon wears on. Neither you nor Snufkin have any pack with you, and you begin to wish you had grabbed one back at the nest. Nothing to be done about that now.

You start searching for bodies of water, and eventually come across a brook.

“You can’t drink that water,” Snufkin says when you kneel at the edge.

“What?”

“It makes you sick unless you boil it. That’s what my papa said.”

Sighing, you move on. Over the mountain ridge there’s a river you know is safe, and little roots to eat. You just have to make it there. Except the further you go, the more Snufkin begins to lag behind you. For the first time, he's quiet for many minutes, his excited chattering dwindling to nothing. It reaches a point where you feel like you're physically dragging him along, until at last his paw slips out of yours.

“Hey, papa?” Snufkin sounds uneasy. “Where is my papa and Bendy?”

“Over the ridge,” you say.

“...They’ve never had me meet them before.”

“This is different.”

Again, silence. Then it's too quiet, and you turn around to find that your son has stopped. He's clutching his scarf and looking nervously at you. "Papa, where are they?"

"Over the ridge," you repeat tightly. You didn't think you'd be able to keep this farce up for long, but you had hoped it would last you long enough to get Snufkin a safe distance. Now you know it won't.

You watch fear break over his face, like seeing a train derail in slow motion. "Where are they?" he asks a third time, as little more than a high-pitched whine. 

"Just a little further," you try to sound calm, but it fails. 

"N-no." Snufkin takes a step back. He's beginning to breathe hard, and everything in you tenses. 

"Snufkin," you say sharply, instinctively. "I'm-"

"Happy.  _Happy._ I knew it. I knew you were all wrong! You don't love me! I shouldn't have trusted you, I just - I wanted to see them so badly -" his voice breaks into a dismayed keen. "But you're not taking me to them, are you? You're trying to trick me!"

You scramble to his side, clutch his coat, "please, please, dear, I do love you - you're - you're right, I'm not taking you to them. I'm saving you; we're so close, if we just make it a little further, you'll be free-"

But your words don't soothe him. They do exactly the opposite. 

“I wanna go back, I wanna go back, papa, take me back-“ he struggles out your grip, and as soon as he's free, his nails clench into his own wrists. He saws them up and down, up and down, ripping up wet flaps of skin.  

“Stop, stop, _stop_!” What is he _doing_ - You wrench his paws apart, and are struck by how emaciated Snufkin is, bones jutting from his wrists beneath a tight translucent wrap of skin.

Snufkin's thin face is scrunched up and ugly in tears.  Broken nails flared senselessly in the air, desperate to return to flesh. “Papa, please, when are we going back, when do I get to see them?”

“You’re not going back. You’re free, Snufkin."

“Happy. My name is Happy. When do I get to see them again?”

“ _Snufkin_ , we’re not going-“

Snufkin howls. He pinwheels his wrists, slipping from your clutches, and immediately returns to scrubbing splintered fingernails over his forearms.

“Stop that!” You're frantic, but so is he.

“I have to,” Snufkin gasps, “I have to hurt myself. They’d want that. I shouldn't have left them. I shouldn't have followed you - _you're_ evil!”

You wrap your arms around him. Anything to stop him from hurting himself. He writhes like a salted slug in your grip. "Get off me, get off me, I hate you! I need Bendy; I need my papa-" 

“I’m here, dear-“

“ _No!_  My other papa. My _real_ papa-“

Air rushes from your lungs, and you find that you can't draw in another breath. All you can do is hug him tight. Deep in your bones, you are hollow. He thrashes. No longer do you have words to counter him. You've never been so broken as you are now, having heard him say that. 

"They know how to hurt me right," Snufkin snarls, choosing to attack you when your hold prevents him from hurting himself. " _You_ don't know _anything_! You're just dumb, and mean, and you made me think all these lies about the world!"

"I never lied to you," you utter quietly. 

"Yes, you did!" he squeals and stomps on your toes, but you squeeze your eyes shut and ignore the pain. It's nothing less than you deserve, and it's nothing compared to what he's saying. "You made me think you were good, that you didn't want to hurt me! But I know better now. You didn't use me like a father should!" Then he falters, as if he's realized that two bits of his logic don't quite add up.

"I don't want to hurt you," you again speak quietly, like murmuring to a frightened animal. "I want to protect you."

Snufkin seems to be grappling with himself over what he should be upset about. Then, abandoning the contradictory ideas, he launches into the older tirade, "I need Bendy, papa. I need him so badly, I need him to hurt me, please." The whites of his eyes are stark and bright. Your own eyes are wet. He's so broken. He's so changed. Recovery seems like such a steep, steep climb, and a fear has wormed deep in your heart that it's not even possible. 

"Papa, please, please let me go," he begs. 

"If I let you go," you murmur, "will you promise not to hurt yourself?"

"Yes, yes!"

You release him.

Immediately, he's off like a shot, tearing back the way you came, and screaming for help.

 


	3. Chapter 3

There are things you want to do, and things you have to do.

When Snufkin runs off screaming for help, you know he will, sooner or later, grab the attention of the very things you’re trying to avoid. You can’t allow him to return to their clutches.

It’s not difficult at all to catch up – his injuries and state of starvation have done nothing good for him. But when you grab him, and try frantically to calm him, he scratches at you and screams like a wild animal. He’s manic at this point, beyond any reasoning or logic. He kicks, writhes, and relentlessly howls for his abusers.

So there it is: there are things you want to do, and things you have to do.

It makes you feel like a snake, but you remove your scarf and force it into his mouth. You knot it firmly around his head while he squeals in insult.

Everything will be okay, you tell yourself. Every day will take you further away from those monsters, and every day you can work on healing your son. This is only what you have to do now, while Snufkin is still deeply traumatized, and while the two of you are within dangerous territory.

“Everything will be okay,” you tell him also, as you yank free his own scarf and snatch his thin wrists to knot them together. He doesn’t have to speak to make it clear he doesn’t believe you.

“Please, dear,” you urge, tugging him, “only a little further and then we can stop for the night.”

He digs in his feet and screams into your scarf.

You remember, when he was very little, how you loved to cradle him in your scarf, and how serene he’d be, peering up at you with curious dark eyes, a sunny smile, and little baby paws squeezing the fabric. He is so far from that now.

“Snufkin, please,” you beg weakly.

His teeth gnash. When he looks at you, it’s with a scrunched, red-faced fury. He hates you.

Shuddering, you avert your eyes. Endure. Everything will get better. Time heals. With this burning in your mind, you wrap an arm around his back and tug. He _will_ move; he _has_ to move.

Snufkin makes a shriek of a noise that you hope never to hear again. It’s one of pure agony, and you release him almost immediately, eyes round. You hurt him somehow. You skirt behind him, and glimpse dark speckles of red appearing through the fabric where you had touched.

“What is that?” you ask blankly. Snufkin only hisses through the gag.

You tug the hem of his coat up (deliberately ignoring everything waist down), and peel it away from his sticky skin. This reveals several deep scours in the meat of his back, each scabbed a near-black color. They’re… bite marks. Ones large enough to leave no doubt at all in your mind what caused them.

Only one has the scabs ripped partly off, and that’s the one lightly welling with bright red blood.

This makes you only more certain that if you had not gotten Snufkin free, they would have killed him, sooner or later. You have to keep moving.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, and, after tugging down his coat, you hunch over, and haul him over your shoulder. It frightens you, how light he is.

He screams and beats at your back, but you cling to him with your own life.

This is how you progress through the forest, for hours, until the shadows are long and the nightly cicadas begin their chirruping. Your body aches. Snufkin has gone quiet and limp, with only his breathing to let you know he’s still alive.

You crest over the top of the ridge, and begin the descent down, finally reaching a bend in the wide, slow river that you’re familiar with. It’s here you set Snufkin down, and find that he hasn’t fallen asleep, as you were wondering – instead he’s glaring at you.

“I’ll get you some food and water,” you promise him, before wandering to the river. This is a good, clean river, one you know is safe and unpolluted. You gulp down several handfuls of water before refilling your canteen and wandering back to Snufkin.

“I’m going to remove the gag,” you say, “will you promise not to scream?”

He nods.

You doubt his promises now. He’s been tortured and twisted into something awful, and he’s already proven he’ll promise things in order to get what he wants. But you have to trust him and have faith in him. So you untie the knot and your scarf falls away.

“Let me go,” he growls. It’s a testament to the horribleness of the situation that you’re glad he, at the very least, did not immediately start screaming. Maybe it’s a sign of recovery, of a rational mind returning.

You hold out the canteen. “Water.”

“No.”

You hadn’t expected that. You'd assumed his thirst would be greater than any stubbornness. “Snufkin-“

“Happy.”

You bite your tongue. Patience. “Please,” you say. “At least a sip.”

“I won’t until Bendy or the Joxter say I can.”

“You’ll die of thirst.”

He sticks his chin up petulantly.

It breaks your heart, but you tuck away the canteen. You will try again later. He will get better. For now, the daylight is fast waning, and you had better hurry if you want to eat.

You move to the river’s edge, and grasp the thick stems of the cattails, pulling them up by the root. This will do for a meal. Once you’ve collected a good twenty or so of them, you carry them back to Snufkin. He’s rubbing his wrists together, trying to worm out of the knots keeping them bound.

“That won’t work,” you sigh softly. You know quite a lot about knots. Everything you know, you had taught to Snufkin, little by little, whenever he had the patience to sit and listen and learn. And he had been such an energetic young Snufkin, eager to explore, bouncing around, tugging on your clothes and begging you to go hither or thither. You'd been hard pressed to sit him down and teach him anything at all, but gradually he did learn, about knots and food and plants and survival.

He should know how sturdy those knots are. He should know because he should be able to make them himself. But still he struggles in them like an animal unable to glean its own helplessness.

Solemnly you sit by him, and whisk your knife from your belt, cutting away the roots at the base of the pale white stalk, and then cutting away a good four to six inches up from that. Snufkin is watching you intently. He’s seen you do this before, of course – he should know how to do it himself. But it’s oddly comforting and familiar, to have him watching you work.

Heartened, you peel away the fibrous layers of each stalk to extract the tender pearly core of the shoot. You do this carefully with every cattail stalk, until there’s a whole array of soft cores lined neatly up.

“Shall we cook them, or eat them raw tonight?” you ask Snufkin, just as if these past several years had not passed, and the two of you were discussing dinner as normal.

“Can I have that knife?” Snufkin responds.

It dawns on you. He was not watching you prepare the shoots. He was watching the knife.

“I’m not allowed knives normally,” Snufkin adds. “But I need to hurt myself. For them. For being bad, and leaving them. They’d understand.”

Quietly you tuck the knife back into your belt. “Raw then,” you say, and nudge a little more than half of the shoots his way. “You need to eat.”

“I’m not eating,” he replies.

“Just one,” you plead.

“I hate you.”

You let out a shaky breath. Take one shoot, and quietly bite into it. The crunching sounds abnormally loud in the silence, even with the backdrop of cicadas. You wish he would eat. You wish many, many things. You also have many many questions, all of which you are too scared to ask.

Any illusion that this was like before is gone.

You eat about half the shoots. As you do, Snufkin starts rocking. Forward and back forward and back. His fingers squeeze around the harmonicas around his neck. He brings one to his lips, and kisses the smooth metal surface. You’re seized by the nearly overwhelming desire to yank the thing off his neck and throw into the weeds. But he’s not screaming, you try to remind yourself. Perhaps that is the goal for today, the step for today. Sitting beside you, away from them, and being reasonably calm.

“Are you sure?” you hold out another shoot. His look is icy. He’s started muttering, whispering with his lips brushing lightly over the harmonica’s surface. Even right beside him, you can’t comprehend what he’s saying, but the dry hissing syllables unsettle you.

“Sleep, then.” It is only early spring, and the nights are still chilly and lonely. Under such circumstances, it made sense for any individuals together to huddle, and gather warmth from each other. You don’t like how sparsely dressed Snufkin is, how prone to chill he must be, and you wish you could curl around him and hold him close for the night. But you know better than to ask.

Your wool blanket was abandoned when Bendy attacked you and you fled from the nest; only now do you wish you had remembered to grab it. Instead, you peel off your top coat layer, and place it beside Snufkin.

“If you get cold,” you tell him.

He continues on whispering.

Sighing, you curl up beneath a tree, cold now yourself. You remain awake for a long, long time, eyes fixed worriedly on Snufkin. He never grabs your coat. He rocks, and whispers. At one point, when the night is black and you can barely see Snufkin at all, he begins to cry.

Some time later, you fall asleep.

 

 

 

Something is wrong.

You know this with the deepness of a Foreboding.

Something is very, very wrong.

You jerk your head up, instantly awake. The sky is young and pink with the newly arrived sun.

Snufkin is nowhere in sight.

Immediately you’re on your feet, nostrils flaring. He couldn’t have gone far. You’ll track him down again, it will be okay, it will-

There’s a splash. It jerks your attention to the lake. Your heart drops straight through your stomach when you see green fabric billowing under the surface of the water.

“Snufkin!” you bolt for the lake. He’s completely immersed, his hair waving in a ghostly halo around his head, and for a heartbeat, you’re absolutely certain he’s dead. But your arms plunge into the freezing water anyway.

He’s heavy now, no longer a small child, but you find new strength to heave him out of the water. Reeds cling to his soaked clothes; hair sticks to his dripping face, and then he’s sucking in a huge lungful of air before coughing violently. You nearly cry in relief.

“Snufkin, Snufkin, can you breathe?”

He jerks away from you, lands like a caught fish onto the grit of the bank with his wrists still bound tightly in front of his body. But when he looks up at you, his eyes are wild. “Don’t stop me!” he snarls, “I need this, I-“ another coughing fit seizes him and he spits up lake water. He laughs through it, a gargled, hideous sound, and his lips are twisted up in a painful rictus. Sickly sweet words form, “It’s almost like Bendy, papa, like ink hugging everywhere at once-“

You barely have time to be horrified before Snufkin is clawing back into the lake.

Creator above, he’s trying to kill himself.

You grab one thrashing ankle and heave, but Snufkin is determined, clinging to the reeds, kicking his legs and churning up silt and rock.

You finally grab a fistful of Snufkin’s hair and yank his head out of the water. Neck craned back, his Adam’s apple bobbing under his pale throat, Snufkin launches into a nearly incomprehensible rambling, “d-don’t papa, please, let me go back in, let me – I need Bendy, I need him to hold me, please please-“

“You can’t swim,” you cry in bewilderment, as you try to twist him onto the bank. “You’ll drown.”

“I’d rather that!” A scrabbling battle ensues, and every second out of the water, Snufkin expression contorts more and more with distress, “please,” he moans, “I want him to smother me, drown me nicely, or not nicely, however he wants it, I can still be useful, I’m sorry for running away-“ soon he’s in tears, his words wet and bubbling, “don’t hate me, Bendy, please, want you inside and out, I’ll be good, please hold me, please fuck me-“

Thankfully you do not have time to dwell on those words. If you spent too long thinking about them, you wouldn't be able to help him at all.

You loop your arm in his and drag him bodily away from the lake.

“No no no no!” Deprived of what he was asking for, Snufkin falls into blubbering incoherent noises. It sounds as though your son is being tortured, and it sets you off just as manically as him.

It’s immersion he wants. Suffocation, immersion, and – and something else you would never do. But immersion can be mimicked.

Feeling disgusting, you wrap your arms and legs around Snufkin’s shivering body and squeeze him far tighter than any normal person would.

Snufkin’s struggles weaken, die. “Bendy,” he gasps. “Tighter. More.”

Tighter? You comply, feeling like a demon in your heart. You’re mimicking one, at any rate. Calming Snufkin only by imitating something you aren’t. Something that Snufkin should never want.

Shuddering, Snufkin wraps his own arms around himself, squeezes.

“I’m not Bendy,” you say. “And you’re safe.”

Snufkin laughs. “He loves me.”

“No.”

“He doesn’t kill me, like the other Snufkins.”

“He was hurting you.”

“Snufkins deserve to be hurt,” Snufkin snarls with sudden ferocity. “It’s what they’re good for.”

“That isn’t true.” You have to wrestle him still again.

“It is,” Snufkin rasps, “We’re just meat, papa; we’re playthings. I’m lucky to have them.” Then he twists in your arms and you see his eerie, prideful smile. “They love me, and want to keep me. That makes me better than other Snufkins. When Bendy finds out you stole me, he’s gonna kill you.”

You blink, struggling to follow his scattered train of thought. What he says makes you want to say so many things yourself. You force down your anger, and murmur, “You are not property.”

“I’m _his_ property.” He says it with rapturous awe, but his body is shaking in your arms. He’s terrified, you realize, though you are not sure of what.

“Snufkin-“ you start.

“Happy.”

You nearly bite through your lip, but you summon patience. “Happy, then. That isn’t love. Love is wanting the best for someone. Love is cherishing someone. It’s-“

“I can show you how he cherishes me.” In your loosened grip, Snufkin’s hands dive between his legs, and his filthy fingers jam up under his wet coat.

“No!” You yank his hands away. “That’s not –“ You shudder. How can you begin to explain? Nothing you say is reaching him. Time. It takes time. Patience. But it’s so hard to be patient. So terrifying to realize the kind of things they’d subjected him to, and for years. You’ve never felt so helpless. So dismayed. The emaciated shaking creature in your arms hardly feels like your son, and that scares you. How can you get him back? Deeper than that lurks the question, _can you?_

Perhaps you were silent too long. Snufkin asks, quietly, “if I let you fuck me, will you let me go?”

You suck in a sharp breath.

He continues, “normally, nobody else is allowed to play with me.” He meets your gaze, and his eyes are round and tremulous. “But I won’t tell Bendy, promise. You can do what you want. Just let me go, please.”

You release him in disgust and stagger back. “No. No, Snufkin-“

“ _Happy_!” It erupts into a scream, and then his broken nails scour into his thigh. Swearing, you lunge to his side again. Except he doesn’t stop screaming, and he doesn’t stop trying to hurt himself.

He ends up gagged again, and with the scarf around his wrists similarly wrapped around his hands to prevent him from hurting himself. You feel ill.

You don’t know what to do.

You need help.


	4. Chapter 4

Snufkin screams through his gag until he loses his voice. He tries to scratch at his skin, but the scarf wrapped around his paws prevents any further damage.

You feel sick.

Upon cresting the ridge of the mountain, you had seen a blue house like a jewel in the valley, but now that you are outside the valley, you’re too frightened to re-enter it to speak to the occupants of the house. Going back in the valley means going back into that Joxter’s territory. You have to seek other options.

But you have always been solitary, out of necessity rather than desire, your only companions a Mymble, and your son, and eventually, various Snufkins who were comfortable with your presence.

The only Mymble you truly knew is very far from here. That leaves other Snufkins, though you know of only one lately, the one you had nested with not a few weeks ago. By now he has surely wandered far, but perhaps if you returned to your old nest, you could pick up his scent and follow it…

The trouble, of course, is getting there. Your back is aching, and you don’t imagine you can carry Snufkin for long, but you scoop him over your shoulder again and trudge on. You don’t see any other options.

Finally at midday you stop, your entire body screaming in protest, and you lower Snufkin to the ground. He’s glaring at you, chewing his gag as normal. He had been screaming through some of the trip, and you feel exhausted and spent despite it barely being past noon.

“I want to take off your gag. Please,” you murmur. “Will you promise not to scream?” This worked last time, him promising, until of course something new set him off.

He nods.

You undo the gag, and he licks his dry lips. He’s silent, but it is not the silence of peace that you are familiar with.

“Thank you,” you tell him anyway. You had collected a few pears on your route, and you hold one out to Snufkin now.

He shakes his head.

He hasn’t eaten for the entirety of the time he’s been with you, which is now close to two days.

“Please,” you urge.

He shakes his head again.

“Just one bite?” you bite into a pear yourself to demonstrate, as you once had when he was a small child, and a fussy eater. “It’s good,” you bribe.

“I’m not going to eat,” he replies with a deadly calm that has your skin prickling. There was a finality to those words. A hidden _ever._ In five words he makes it clear how different this is from any trivial fussy eating.

“Snufkin-“ you start, and the gaze he fixes upon you is pure hatred.

It’s frightening how sane he looks when he responds, “If I can’t be useful, then I should be dead.”

“That isn’t true.”

“It is.” He closes his eyes and sighs softly, in absolute acceptance of his fate.

It hurts to see, and anger boils out of the hurt.

“No,” you say. “You _will_ eat.”

He doesn’t deign to respond. Furious, you take a pear and begin to hack it into small, bite sized pieces. You did not save him just so he could voluntarily decide to starve himself. And you will do what you have to to ensure he survives long enough to recover and care for himself. In your anger, you nearly slice through your own fingers twice, but finally you end up with lots of tiny pear bits.

“Open your mouth,” you tell him.

He is motionless.

“Open your mouth!” You grab his jaw and try to force fingers between his teeth, but he keeps them clamped tight shut.

He will eat. Whether he wants to or not. You will keep him alive.

Your nail digs into his gums. His mouth opens in a cry, and you shove your fingers and a pear piece down his throat. This does not go remotely the way you hoped when he grinds his teeth over your fingers and the pain is unbelievable.

You manage to yank your paw out and hissing, clutch the throbbing fingers while Snufkin leans over and spits out the pear.

Fine.

You seize a solid looking stick. It takes a disturbing amount of violence and strength to wedge the thing between his teeth, and more still to hold him in place while you poke another pear slice past his gag reflex. You suspect if he were not already weak, you would never have achieved it, but finally you force him to choke down a few pieces in this manner.

It’s not enough, you know. But you can’t bring yourself to do more.

When you release him, he jerks free and releases the stick. “I hate you,” he hisses.

“I know,” you answer weakly. "But I love you." All the anger has left you. In its place is only weariness. You don’t like that you turned to violence as a solution. But you also don’t know if you had any choice.

“I hate you - I hate you - I hate you-“

Maybe he will be hungry enough in the evening. Maybe he will eat on his own. If only you believed that.

“I hate you Ihateyou _Ihateyou_ -“

Whatever is possessing him is much greater than his most base instinct to survive. Which means he may not eat no matter how hungry he gets. And that frightens you, deeply. 

“You’re not my papa at all,” he snarls. “If you loved me you’d take me back to them!”

“Nobody who loves you would do that."

“Take me back to them _now_!” he shrieks.

“No."

“ _Take me back_!” He’s starting to rock, his eyes going round with anxiety. He’ll start panicking, you know, and you hate it. Your words are sharper than you'd like when you say,

“I’m not taking you back to those monsters, not ever again, Snufkin.”

He snaps. The wounded yowl has his sick name buried somewhere in it; your ears ring and your cardiac muscle spasms in pain from the tormented sound. You hate it. 

On an odious hunch, you envelop him in something that could be a hug but truthfully hazards closer to constriction. It takes a few moments. It’s not what he’s used to, you know that: horribly, you can imagine what he’s used to, based on the sight of that grinning monster and Snufkin equating his hold to that of water drowning him. No mumrik can meet that. But he’s desperate to be soothed.

Slowly, slowly, he stills, and his screaming dwindles to loud sobbing, which in itself gradually wanes.

You release him, and pull away, frustrated that again, this was your solution, that you had nothing better.

“I miss him,” he says softly. “I miss him wrapped around me.”

“Sn-“ you start, and then stop. “Happy. Do you remember, love, when you were very young, and the noises of the forest at night would frighten you?”

His brow furrows.

“You would curl up against me, tremble and hide your face in my scarf – and you were so very small. I would stroke your hair, and hum softly to you until you slept… do you remember that?”

There is no recognition in his eyes. Nothing but a lonesome melancholy that you suspect has nothing whatsoever to do with you. How could he miss something so awful? How had they twisted him so terribly? You push aside your own agony. This isn't about you. It's about him, and he needs to remember what comfort really is, what being a mumrik is really about. 

Softly, you begin to hum. Each note familiar and low and rocking. A lullaby.

His eyes widen. You’re confused by the grin that spreads across his face, but you continue the tune, because at least there is now familiarity. He nods frantically, and to your shock, hums along. If you don’t look at the eerie delight in his face, then you can allow yourself to enjoy the moment. As if nothing in these past several years had happened to him. As if all is right in the world.

The notes finish. You dare to smile at him, kindly. “You remember,” you say.

“Yes, that’s Bendy’s favorite song!" Snufkin enthuses.

Oh.

“I play it for him aaall the time,” Snufkin goes on. He’s smiling, but it's manic. “At first it was just for fun, because he really loves music, papa, and I love to play for him as long as he wants me to, even though he never gets tired and sometimes wants me to play for hours and hours and hours-“

You stand up.

“But then,” Snufkin continues. “The very first time he got to licking my cunt, he got a little too excited, and started biting instead. That’s what some of the scars are from, papa, the ones you saw before – but anyway, I was worried he was going to kill me – although, if he did, that would be okay too, because it’s what he wants – but I started whistling that song! It reminded him how much he liked me and that I play music for him, because the Joxter isn’t very good at it, and he stopped biting through my thighs almost right away. I had forgotten where the song came from until now! I still play it for him all the time, and I think he always remembers that first time he almost ate through me, because-”

You can’t listen anymore. You dart into the woods, and travel until you can’t hear him anymore. By a tuft of yellow wildflowers, you hunch over and focus simply on breathing.

Snufkin had been with them for years. The enormity of that is beginning to sink in. That is an awful long time to have a great many experiences. You recall what he’d been doing with that demon when you first stumbled across him, and it makes you sick to your stomach. He’d welcomed that. Wanted it.

No, you can’t think about that. It’s very clear he’s only been twisted into thinking he does. Snufkin wouldn't have wanted any of this.

You get nervous, realizing you shouldn't have left him alone, and then hurry back.

It only took a few minutes for Snufkin to find trouble.

He’s curled awkwardly in a sitting position. Between his feet he holds the handle of a knife, and his legs are poised in a tight butterfly position. The knife blade, meanwhile, is buried up inside him.

You must have made some noise of horror, because Snufkin looks up in surprise. “Papa,” he smiles, eyes puffy and red rimmed. “I got so longing, thinking of Bendy… I wanted him so badly. I wanted him inside him. And you left this knife for me… I’d say you were kind, if I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know you were cruel and evil.”

The knife you’d used to slice the pears. You'd left it behind.

“It’s not the same,” Snufkin continues, “but I’m sure he’d be happy to know I’m thinking of him. I don’t want him to think I forgot about him. I want him to know that even when we’re apart, he’s all I care about.”

“Snufkin,” you utter stupidly.

Snufkin’s expression drops immediately. Frowning, he refocuses his attention on the knife, which he sets to pulling deeper into himself.

“Snufkin, no!”

“My name is Happy.”

You try to keep your voice low, soothing, “Okay, okay, Happy-“

He laughs jaggedly, like broken glass. “Oh, I know what you do now, Joxter. You try to pretend like you’re my friend, like you understand and care about me – but only they do.” His eyes are full of rage. “Why can’t you just use me and then give me back? You don’t even care how big of a deal that is, do you? No Joxter has used me for several seasons.”

“Please take the knife out,” you plead, terrified to approach should it instigate him to shove the thing deeper.

“Do you like to watch instead?” Snufkin asks. “Is that what you want? Get another Snufkin, I’ll play with him. I’ll put on a show for you. Whatever you want. Just take me back!”

“Happy, please- you’ll cut yourself-“

“What do you want?” he screams.

“Take the knife out, _please_!"

His eyes are narrowed into slits. Slowly, he drags the knife out of himself. It’s at the very end that he hisses and flinches; your heart jolts. No. Blood wells up. No no-

Swearing, you collapse to his side, throw the knife far from his reach and – oh, he’s got a slice, right at the very edge, thankfully, very very shallow and small – Quickly you tear a small bit of fabric from your undershirt, and press it it to the wound. 

And you hate looking, but you have to, and now that you are, you see something you can’t at first explain. The inside of his entrance is an inflamed red color. Raw like a tender sore.  

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Snufkin murmurs, and you jerk back.

“What’s wrong with it?” you ask tightly.

“Nothing. It’s the way it should be.” He delivers this line with so much satisfaction, so much certainty. He knows there’s something wrong, he absolutely knows, but he’s overwhelmingly pleased about it.

You try to stifle your panic. _What did they do to him. What did they do to him._

“How did it get like this?” you rephrase, dreading the answer.

“Oh, Bendy of course. He uses me often, ‘cause I need it, and he loves me. His ink can burn a little, though, and well, when he uses me as often as he does, it can start to really hurt.” Snufkin squirms, and you feel disgusted when his privates rub against the fabric and your paw.

“Hold still.”

“I love when it hurts,” he moans. “I love when it gets so whitehot I barely feel any pleasure, and he just keeps going, until sometimes I’m clawing at him and begging him to stop, but he won’t-“

“That’s not love,” you say shortly.

“It’s the best kind of love.”

“No, it’s twisted. If someone loves you, they shouldn't hurt you.”

“Well, that depends on the species,” Snufkin says matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“If you and my papa were to make love, then yes. It shouldn’t be painful. Although my papa would never want to be with you, because you took me away, and he knows now that you're a terrible Joxter. But I’m a Snufkin, papa, and even though I’m very special Snufkin, that means I should be hurt. So you’re right, for most mumriks. But Snufkins are mostly just playthings.”

“They’re not.”

“It’s not a bad thing! Sometimes my papa and Bendy even let me have my own Snufkin – well, we all share, but I get to enjoy them too – and I love teaching them how they should be.” Snufkin sits a little straighter, and beams. “My papa says I’m a really good teacher. I can lead by example, see. But my papa says none of them break as nicely as I did. Which is probably why they kill most of them. I have to kill some of the others that stay in the nest too long. None of them are as cooperative as me, see, and what if they end up hurting Bendy?”

You look up. “Bendy can be hurt?” He had seemed so invulnerable, but if a Snufkin could harm him-

“Well,” Snufkin hedges, “Nobody has managed it before, but – but I have to protect him, just in case, I have to kill them for him, I have to – when he names them, I know he wants to keep them, and then – I have to kill them, for him, I have to kill them so they don’t replace me!” Snufkin pants, eyes frantic. “What he starts liking them more than me? What if –“ confused, he shakes his head. “No, I do it for Bendy, so they don’t hurt him, or I do it out of self-defense, because they hurt me first, and I have to take care of their property – take of myself – more than-“

“Shut up.”

“What if he finds another one while I’m gone?” Snufkin’s paralyzed. “What if he finds one and names it and I’m not there to kill it – what if he likes it more than me?”

“S- Happy. Stop it.” You’re trying to process that your son has killed – not just one, it seems.

"I have to go back," Snufkin moans. "This is all your fault. If Bendy doesn't want me anymore, it's all your fault. If I die because I'm not needed anymore, it's because of you!"

"You do not need to be useful. You just need to be yourself."

"Nonono," he shook his head viciously side to side. "Just rape me and let me go!"

"I don't want to-"

Snufkin's bound paws shove you in the chest. In a confusing tangle of limbs, you both fall over, and he ends up on top of you, lips mashed to yours. You splutter. His tongue crams itself between your lips, but your teeth are gritted tight together and it turns into sloppy licking before you manage to kick him off and scramble up panting. 

"No!" you yell. 

He curls up and starts to cry. 

You close your eyes. Calm. Calm. Stay calm. Breathe. It's trauma. Progress can be made. You just need patience. 

It takes you a minute to gather yourself, and then you kneel by his side. You are afraid to touch, in case he warps it as something twisted that you would never do. But you stay near, and speak low and soothingly, as if speaking to a frightened animal. "Dear, I never wanted to hurt you. You must believe me. You must remember."

He continues to cry, face hidden. 

"I didn't know I had a son, at first," you huff in weak amusement. "I came to visit your mother, and she had you in a little crib, but you were fussing and fussing. Oh, she was so tired of it. Said you wouldn't ever smile." Your own lips tilt up at the memory. "I wish I could say I picked you up and all was better, but you did fuss so much. But when I looked into your eyes, I felt..." Words fail. Nothing quite captures the rush of paternal affection that had flowed through you, or the sudden protective love you had felt. 

"Well," you continue. "I knew right away I wanted nothing but your safety and happiness. And everything I have done since that moment, I tried to do for you. I was not always the best at it. Or any good at it at all." 

You glance away. Throughout Happy's childhood, you had felt so inadequate. So ill-prepared. Sometimes - often - you had thought he would be better off with his mother. But she did not want him, and you never brought him back. You simply endured, and tried, one way or another.

"I tried to teach you all I know," you continue, quieter. Snufkin's crying has diminished. "I tried to prepare you for the world, and I hoped that my instruction would be enough for you be your own person and yet safe..." What an illusion that had been. "I'm sorry, ... Happy. I'm sorry that it was not enough. But let me try to help you now." Another humorless smile. Snufkin had, after all, gotten the trait from you. "I can't promise I will be any good at it. But let me try."

Your gaze had been distant this whole time, but when you look again at Snufkin, you see he has been watching you with his clever, dark Joxter-like eyes. 

Silently, he nods.


	5. Chapter 5

Snufkin scares you.

That’s something you never would have remotely imagined before.

But…. He scares you.

He has stopped screaming, stopped mutilating himself. You don’t keep him tied or bound anymore, except at night, when you sleep and can’t keep an eye on him. This is supposed to be progress. Those signs _should_ indicate he’s getting better. Only he’s not. Not really. He has just learned to comply.

He eats exactly what you give him, whenever you give it to him (sometimes he throws it up, but you don’t think he means to do this, and he apologizes for it). He drinks water now, though only when you give it to him. He curls up at night and is quiet. You’re not sure if he actually sleeps, because he seems to get increasingly more tired despite his spike in food intake. But he at least lies quietly.

He tells you he loves you, too. Which is the oddest, most unsettling thing, even if it shouldn’t be. Every time, his expression is completely blank, and his eyes entirely insincere. He speaks the words like he’s reading off a paper. Merely reciting.

“Don’t, dear,” you respond once, pained. “Only say if it you mean it.”

“I do mean it,” he says mechanically. “I’m a good boy.”

“No. I want you to be _well_ , Snufkin, not good-“

He twitches, and you can see he wants to correct you. He’s upset at the name again.

“Happy,” you sigh. “I want you…” to be happy. You suppose there’s no point in saying it.

“Anything you want, papa,” he replies. He’s back to showing no emotion.

“What do _you_ want?” you ask weakly.

He’s confused by the question. Perhaps **they** had never asked such a thing of him before. When he answers, it’s with a tentative caution, like he wants to make sure it’s the right answer, “I want you to help me? And for you to have me all to yourself?” He squints, aware on some level that wasn’t how he was supposed to respond, and continues falteringly, “I want to be a good son and make you happy.”

You don’t have a response. It’s such a pathetic lie you can’t imagine why he bothered to say it. Unless he actually thinks he’s being convincing, which only cements in how he operates on a wavelength utterly detached from reality.

Part of you wants to iterate again _what do YOU want_ but you are afraid of the truth. Instead you wander away to gather sticks for a fire.

The next morning you are roused early to the sound of sobbing.

Snufkin is curled up nearby (one ankle tied to a tree), and he’s shaking with tears.

Your heart twists, and you’re by his side in an instant. “Love, shh, shh-“ it’s habit, more than anything, from years of tending to him. You caress his messy hair, but your touch brings him no comfort, not anymore. He flinches; you withdraw mutely. “Happy, please… everything will be okay…”

His face is tear-swollen and red. He smiles. It’s all wrong. Not a nervous smile, not a cheerful smile, not anything like that. It’s a forced, machine-like response. “Everything is okay, papa. I’m here with you. You don’t need to worry.”

He cries every night, then, and it explains why his face is splotchy every morning. You don’t know what to do. He vehemently insists he’s okay, and you can’t make any leeway. Once you even get furious, and yell at him to be honest, to just say how he truly feels – and he stays calm, repeats the same recited words, and shrinks away from you like he expects you to hurt him.

You catch him more than once, caressing and squeezing the harmonicas around his neck. He likes to do it while he’s crying. You watched him once, when he thought you were sleeping, and you saw he was whispering words to the metal.

“What if we got you a new necklace?” you propose, as the two of you are peaceably walking through the woods, days away from the mountain crest. An outsider might even think the two of you were perfectly normal, as two friends, or a father and son pleasantly walking through the woods together. It’s far, far from that.

Snufkin’s body immediately tenses. His eyes flick to you, in that look is a _don’t make me, please_. It implies that he has no power over his own choices, that he’s subject to your whims like a slave, and you hate that implication. (You hate that it’s a little true).

“Only if you’re comfortable with it,” you revise. “Something nicer. You like flowers, dear, don’t you?”

His thin fingers leap to the harmonicas and clutch them tight. “I’d like to keep it, papa.” It’s the most emotion packed into one statement that you've heard for a while, because mostly he’s just repeating things he thinks will make you happy.

You don’t want to press it. But you think that necklace is only a physical weight around his neck, reminding him a constant basis of the horrors he’s witnessed (horrors he’s taken part in, you remind yourself, and then stifle the thought).

Still, ever so slowly, the two of you continue to progress to your old Snufkin’s nest, where you hope you might catch his scent and follow it, and hope perhaps he could break through Happy’s trauma where you yourself are at a loss.

You are only a few days away from the site when Happy's sleeve tugs up and you glimpse wounds on his inner wrist.

“Happy-“ you say shortly, tightly, and he freezes, looks at you in confusion.

“Yes, papa?”

“What is that?”

He follows your line of sight, and then quickly tucks his sleeve back down. “What’s what?” he asks. His blatant lack of ability to lie almost drives you insane. It’s like he isn’t trying but you think he is – he’s just delusional.

“Those cuts,” you snap, and grab his wrist, tug up his sleeve. You’re right: they are fresh. They’re just tiny little nicks, but there are many of them – some recent, some older. It’s almost a gradient along his arm, from new to old. As if he’s doing this in some consistently paced routine.

“What is this?” you demand.

“Nothing.”

You know he has self-mutilation tendencies, but this doesn’t seem like the same thing – this is very different from the wild obsession with tearing into his own flesh. This is… calculated, even. “Happy, please tell me why you’re doing this to yourself,” you beg.

He shakes his head. “No reason, papa.”

You’re very careful to make sure he is never allowed any weapons, or anything that could be _used_  as a weapon. In fact, he carries nothing at all – he still isn’t even wearing trousers, because you had no spare pair, so how could he -?

A suspicion takes root. You grab his sordid necklace, begin to examine each individual instrument and –

Sure enough, one of the harmonicas has a sharp edge. It’s just a little bit of metal jutting out, but it’s speckled with rust red. Emotions churn in your stomach. “Why,” you demand again. “Tell me, Happy.”

“I’ll stop,” he says. “For you, papa.”

You don’t know if you can believe anything he says. But you also can see you aren’t getting anywhere with this. Furious, you back down from the topic.

The very next day, there’s a new little nick on his wrist, and you gather he does this at night. Every night, apparently. You point it out.

“I didn’t do it that time,” he replies. “I don’t know how it happened. Sorry, papa.”

“You very obviously did it.”

He doesn’t seem to know how to reply. All the frustration and worry and sleeplessness culminate. Before you even realize what you’re doing, you’ve grabbed the necklace and snapped it off his neck.

That turns out to be a mistake. It shatters Snufkin’s short-lived cooperation.

He reverts straight back to screaming, thrashing, moaning, and begging to be returned. He refuses to eat, refuses to drink, and refuses to walk with you. Your entire progress is slowed nearly to halt due to him making travel nearly impossible, and your fear mounts that that other Joxter may be tracking you, may be on your heels….

Though you hate to do it, you return his harmonica necklace in the hopes it will earn his cooperation again.

It doesn’t.

He’s evidently lost faith in whatever method of compliancy he was previously employing, and now he’s insatiably distraught.

He screams through the night, shocking your heart in a painfully physical way, making you feel certain you’ll go into cardiac arrest.

Sometimes, when the sky is black, he screams himself hoarse, then there’s just the sound of him thrashing in the ropes. Scrabbling and scratching and whimpering like a trapped animal.

You have to gag him more often than not, but even then your sleep is restless and swarmed with nightmares. What sort of father can sleep soundly with their son kept in such a condition? Invariably you drag yourself back to consciousness each morning, feeling only more ragged and more exhausted and more drained.

“Please, Snufkin,” you urge once, “please won’t you promise me you won’t hurt yourself? Let me leave you untied-“

“Happy, I’m Happy,” Snufkin insists furiously, and you forlornly wrestle the rope back around his wrists.

The only way to ever soothe him is with those consuming, constricting hugs, and even that is a tentative method, not guaranteed to work each time. Worse, you can’t feel good about it, because you know it’s not normal: it cannot truly be helping Snufkin to heal – it’s only playing along with his madness. This is drilled in when Snufkin once elaborates, his voice amorously soft and his eyes distant,

“It feels like Bendy. The way he holds me… It-it’s not the same, but it’s close. When he does it, I can feel how alive he is. All around me and inside me. Squeezing and kneading me. I love it. I love him. I love him so much, Joxter, I miss him, I miss him inside me, I miss him hurting me-”

On more than one occasion, Snufkin takes your scarf and winds it around his body as tight as he can, rocking softly.

It gives you an ugly, disquieting feeling. You hate the idea of comforting Snufkin with only things that remind him of Bendy – but you know of no other way. Nothing else reaches Snufkin. Nothing else can pull him from his panic. You begin to rely on the method so much more than you want to – and you learn how to improve on it to calm Snufkin faster. For example, wrapping the scarf firmly around his arms and torso rather than just his torso. The more confined and helpless Snufkin is, the happier he is.

Meanwhile, your emotions feel like they’re breaking. You hate what you’re doing now, hate tying Snufkin up like an animal, hate gagging him, hate holding him like that demon that had to have crawled out of hell itself. You hate yourself, and you aren’t sleeping, barely eating – if you dare to be truly honest, you hate Snufkin. No - not truly, not exactly, just – you hate that he’s not getting better. You try to be sympathetic: it’s abuse, that’s all, just the abuse and trauma talking, but –

But where is your son under all this? Where is the person you knew before? Does that person still exist at all?

“You are a Snufkin,” you try painfully to explain. “Snufkins are free, part of nature, and spring, and-“

“Snufkins are dumb,” Snufkin replies, his thin wrists pressed to either side of his head, as if forming a little structure of bone to protect himself. “Snufkins are stupid as they come. Snufkins are good to rape and kill.” He’s smiling wide.

“No. No person deserves to – to have those things done to them-“

“Snufkins aren’t people. I’m not a person.”

“You are a person, Snufkin, you’re my s-“

“Happy. My name is Happy, Joxter, why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you-“

“You’re keeping me away from Bendy and my papa. You won’t call me by my name, you’re pretending like I’m a person, you talk like I should opinions- why do you hate me?”

“No, I don’t hate you – you did nothing wrong-“

But that is his mentality. It’s ceaseless. It’s insanity. No matter what you say or do, he can’t be convinced – and if any sort of “conversation” about the matter continues too long, Snufkin devolves into either chanting the name his abusers had given him, or pleading and begging for their attention and pain.

It wears you down to the dirt, and then keeps grating and grating at you, like a wound rubbed with sandpaper over and over and over until it’s wet and slick and flecked with bits of flesh.

You don’t know how much longer you can endure this. Eventually you find your old nest, catching the scent of the Snufkin you had bedded, and you pursue it, but any progress is significantly delayed by Happy’s behavior and his refusal to cooperate.

Your only reprieve is in dreams, on the rare occasions that you dream anything nice.

One night, you dream you’re bedding a soft lovely Toffle, and your subconscious clings to that thought desperately, because it’s a sweet, tender thought so far removed from the pain of your daily life. You caress her cheeks and hair and slide into her wet warmth. She squeezes sweetly around you, twines fingers in your whiskers – and oh, you’re so very weak to that sensation. It always makes you melty and romantic. Your need is so heady you’re dragged half from sleep, just as she places a light kiss on your whiskers –

You grind your hips up; your thighs shake. One, two, three more shallow thrusts.

Your eyes hazily open to find Snufkin's mouth wrapped around your dick.

He sits back and swallows. He’s been crying. “Will you return me now?” he pleads through red-rimmed eyes.

You roll over and vomit.

That morning you don’t speak to Snufkin. You don’t even want to look at him. You don’t want to think. Just keep moving. You eat in silence, then set off again. Snufkin toddles quietly behind you, finally docile (at least for now), though he keeps muttering under his breath.

It’s another chilly, foggy morning. You’re miserable. But at least it’s quiet, if nothing else. Your friend Snufkin’s scent is faint, muffled by the heavy scent of petrichor, and something else, something sweet tickling at your nose. You barely notice, as you're too numb by what had happened earlier. You don't know how to begin to rectify the situation. You dread to think of what an impression it may have left on Snufkin. That he may think you had  _wanted_ that.... You feel sick all over again. You should have woken earlier. Should have... should have...

You're running out of options. Running out of solutions. Every bit of you just prays you will find the Snufkin you're looking for, and that he can help you with your son... Because you need help. You can't do this for much longer.

Slowly the morning sun burns away the fog. You’re buried in your thoughts (mostly, in a determination to _not_ think), when the wind shifts. That sweet smell gets thicker, and then it isn’t as sweet – it’s harsher, acerbic.

You freeze. It’s only now you recognize it. And oh creator above, you wish you had realized sooner. 

Your stomach flips. Panic sets in. “We need to move faster,” you utter. You grasp Snufkin’s thin wrist, try to tow him after, but he digs his heels in.

There’s hope dawning in his eyes. “Bendy,” he breathes.

“No. No, Happy, we have to go-“ You pull harder.

“Bendy, Bendy, Bendy-“

“Happy, _now_ ,” you hiss as low as you can, in the hopes it won’t find you, won’t hear you, won’t catch you –

Then the smell is overpoweringly thick. It's close. Very very close and you are going to die and it's going to take - " _Move_!" you growl.

Snufkin is ripped out of your grasp. You only glimpse a black, amorphous mass in the corner of your vision, and then Snufkin is flung to the ground with the force of it. Immediately it’s all over him, taking no form but sprouting paws and claws and teeth that tear and grab at Snufkin, needily ripping through his shirt and skin, and the low snarling it's making rumbles deep enough to vibrate under your ribs. It's trying to touch and grasp all of Snufkin at once, and given its flexible form, it's succeeding - wrapping around him, squeezing, clutching all over at once.

You’re paralyzed watching. You want to save him. You want to drag that thing off. But you can't bring yourself to move. It would kill you in a heartbeat. It would happily kill you, and then go right back to - to _this_ \- there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

And Snufkin? He’s giggling like crazy. Not the fake terrified laugh you’re accustomed to. No, his expression is ecstatic. He’s happier than you’ve seen him in years. He’s giddy and rapturous and beside himself, gazing at the ink coating his body like he's never seen something so wonderful. You get yet another insight into just how perverted, how corrupted he is. Beyond your saving. And now in the clutches of something that would sooner see you killed than let you touch Snufkin again. 

In such a short period of time, everything went very, very wrong. Beyond your ability to stop it, and you're certainly you're going to die.

“I missed you, I missed you, please forgive me, Bendy, I love you, please,” Snufkin cries. Fingers clench in the ink. His back arches, his legs spread. “Please, I need you,” he begs.

The formless inky mass that is Bendy wrenches Snufkin’s legs further apart, hard enough for him to cry out. Snufkin is penetrated by the ink – it’s impossible to tell if it’s liquid, solid, or something else, but either way, it funnels into him, and Snufkin bucks and moans shamelessly like he can’t get enough of it.

Everything in you is like ice. You look away. Your breath is loud in your ears, and you stumble back on legs that don’t want to support your weight. This can't be happening. All your effort in these past few days and weeks, it can't all be ruined now -

You’re so wrapped up in the devastation that you don’t notice at first when another joins your side, not until that other Joxter’s purring voice reaches your ears,

“So, how did taking my son go? Did he recover nicely? Oh, do tell, did he ever stop wanting Bendy? I was curious if such a thing was possible to achieve.”

You stare at him in horror. How could any person… how could he be so awful… how could he do this?

The Joxter’s delight is immense. “What a look! You understand now, I assume. He belongs with us.”

Rage. You lunge; he steps deftly away.

“Ah-ah. Don’t want to get his attention, do you?”

Part of you thinks you’d be happy to have Bendy murder you, if it meant you got to beat this Joxter’s face into pulp. But when you see the swarming black mass engulfing Snufkin, your fear overrides your desire to die. That thing... you can't describe the terror it makes you feel.

The Joxter’s laugh is low and rolling. “That’s what I thought. Happy needs him, love. And you deserve this betrayal, for being a strange, contrary Joxter... and for turning down my offer to nest with you. We could have been wonderful friends."

"I'd never-" you spit.

"So I learned. It's a pity." For a moment, the Joxter's expression softens. "You really are beautiful. And there would be such a perfect symmetry, don't you think? Bendy gets Happy; I get his father..."

You make a distorted noise, something between a threat and whimper. Despite all you have seen in your life, you can't fathom how evil like this exists in the world.

The Joxter only smiles, honey-sweet. "Say, you had better leave before he finishes. He won’t be too happy that you stole his favorite toy.”

Part of you thinks you want to die, after witnessing this. Thinks you can't possible live on.

“Well?” the Joxter purrs. "There's no reason for you to die. I do love you, after all. Run along, and I'll convince my darling not to follow you, hmm?" You hate him. You hate this monster. Your helplessness flares into rage that immediately cools into despair. You look one last time at your son. His eyes are rolled back, his mouth agape and gasping. Pleading Bendy’s name.

There’s nothing you can do for him. You’re not even sure this is the same son you had raised. There’s so little of that person you knew left in this writhing lust-drunk creature.

Tormented, you twist away. You run. And you don’t stop.

 

 

You wander far, far from Moominvalley, and plan never to return.

Years and years later, in a distant glade in the midst of fall, you glimpse your son again, from afar.

He’s laughing hysterically, leaning up against that awful monster, while the other Joxter surveys them both with a wicked, lazy smile.

He’s happy. Or Happy, as it is. You had done everything in your power to help. Done far more than any other Joxter would ever do.

But there is nothing to be done now. That’s how you comfort yourself when you turn away, and pretend that you had seen nothing.


End file.
